by Eric Ugland
And then I got to the biggest hole of all of them, near the end of my thankless task. It was the one big enough for me to get in. Not quite enough for me to stand up, but certainly crawl. And it went back far enough that I couldn’t see any end to it. I sat on my harness chair for a minute or two debating my plan of attack. I could get off the chair, climb into the hole twenty plus feet off the ground, and see what mystery laid in wait. Or I could lie and say that it was empty, hoping it was actually the truth.
The thing was, I was there for a learning experience, which meant my mentor had to know there was the chance I’d mess up and/or need him to explain things to me. So instead of hopping off into the darkness in front of me, I hauled my elven butt up to the top and waited for Matthew to finish shoveling mud into the filter.
“What?” he asked.
“Big hole,” I replied.
“The pit? Yeah.”
“In the wall.”
“How big?”
“Me sized.”
“Upright?”
“Half? Crouched?”
“Anything in it?”
“I don’t know. Goes too deep to see anything.”
“Well, that’s a kick in the proverbial nuts.”
“Not a good sign?”
“No.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Get a weapon and a lantern.”
“I’m going in?”
“We’re going in,” he said. “Something made that tunnel, and we need to see where it goes.”
37
The sun was kissing the tops of the taller mountains to the north of us, and we three lowly pit workers were standing at the top of the pit with weapons. I had a bow and a ton of arrows, as well as a borrowed wood axe. Matthew had his mace and a large shield. Nadya had two short swords. Up top, staring into the pit, Matthew tapped me on the shoulder.
“I’m forming a party,” he said.
Matthew Gallifrey wants you to join his party.
YES/NO
I had no real idea what a party entailed, what benefits it might offer me, but I figured it was probably better to join in whatever my teacher was telling me to do. And I didn’t really want to ask in front of Nadya and seem like a complete and total noob even though that was a pretty damn good descriptor.
Matthew went in first, dropping his shield in the basket of the harness-chair because it was too big to bring in with him.
I was next, ready to shoot over or around Matthew until I realized that his bulk took up the entire tunnel.
And Nadya brought up the rear. She was definitely less than eager to go into the tunnel, but despite her palpable fear, she said nothing, just tightened her belt and put her game face on. Which was a beautiful game face, by the by. She looked really damn good when she was serious.
We three made squelching noises as we crawled through the tunnel. The mud wasn’t as foul as the stuff in the bottom of the pit, likely because it had less pit beast poop in it. And less refuse in general. But there was still a dense layer of sticky, nasty gunk we had to crawl though, and sticky was putting it lightly. It stuck to most everything, with layer upon layer seeming to build on us as we moved forward, making each yard we traveled that much harder. Matthew and Nadya also had to crawl with lanterns. I’d tried to get Matthew to let me go first because I could see in the dark, but he wasn’t willing to let me take that risk.
Which was kind of him, I suppose.
Everything was going along fine until Matthew tumbled out of sight.
I paused, and Nadya ran into my butt with her face.
Then she cursed and shoved me.
And I went tumbling down a steep slope, coming to a rest in a thick bowl of the muck. Looking around in my dark vision, I could see that we were in a room of sorts. A large open area about twenty feet high and fifty feet around. Not a cavern though, this seemed like it had been purposefully constructed by something.
In front of me, and slightly underneath me, Matthew was struggling to free himself from the sticky mud. He’d taken the brunt of my fall as well as his, and it seemed I’d pushed him deeper in. I got my feet on solid ground, then helped him to his feet. He managed to keep his grip on his mace and his lantern, though the lantern was having serious trouble putting any light out through the muck all over it. Scraping the mud off got a little more light out, but not much, as the mud seemed to leave a film over the glass that we couldn’t get off. Probably because everything we had was coated in mud. Including my bow, which pretty much made the weapon useless. So I had the axe and a bunch of arrows. Not the best load-out for this situation. Or any situation really. I don’t think there’s a fight where having a bunch of arrows and no bow is going to be the go-to equipment.
“What is this place?” asked Nadya, her voice coming from behind us.
She kneeled on the edge where the tunnel met the bowl, smart enough to not fall in. Or lucky enough. Or weighed less than we did so she didn’t cause the ground to cave in.
Matthew spun his head around and held a finger to his lips.
I heard something. Probably the same thing Matthew had been listening to, or at least the thing he’d been trying to hear. Something low in tone, almost rumbling. Followed very quickly by a distinct shaking in front and below us.
Something started rising from the mud. Something big. Really big, enough that it looked like half the room was coming up at us.
And it just kept rising. A huge spheroid sort of a thing, and at first I thought it was an ooze, but then I realized that was just the mud hanging on the thing. Then it unfolded itself, a massive head coming up over the torso until the head of the creature was up against the roof of the cavern.
It shook its massive head from side to side, and large swathes of mud came flying off, splattering against us and the walls and giving me a better picture of what exactly we were up against. It was an absolutely ginormous version of a cymothoa. The bug things I’d spent days shooting with arrows.
There was a tense moment as we all stood very still. All four of the beings there. My brain was running through everything I had on me, every technique I knew and what I was able to do. Mostly, I was drawing a blank. Partially because I was woefully unprepared and partly because of the absolute terror pumping through me.
It didn’t seem like Matthew was faring much better, being that he was standing stock still, mouth agape, staring at the monstrosity before us.
Because I’m curious, and a bit of an idiot when it comes to not casting magic, naturally, I cast my identification spell towards the creature.
Lesser Cymothoa Queen
Lvl ??? Greater Insect
A queen. I wonder if she knew I’d killed most of her babies. The creature opened its maw, huge mandibles spread wide on either side and came rushing down at Matthew. I figure she knew.
Matthew wasn’t moving.
Dropping my shoulder, and my axe, I charged into the man and gave him the hardest shove I could out of the path of the monster.
Which, you know, put me right in the path. As the queen’s mouth started to fall on me, I cast shadow step, and everything ground to a halt. The creature was still moving but at less than a snail’s pace. I took a moment to look up into the thing’s mouth, and it was not the best of moves. It was horrible inside, spiky things every which way, a veritable horror show.
Then I crawled out from under the thing, going the opposite way from Matthew, and fumbled around in the mud for the axe I’d dropped until I popped into reality.
The queen slammed into the ground, a wave of mud coming out from her head.
There was a primal sort of roar from Matthew, on the other side of the queen, and I heard the tell-tale sound of mace on carapace. But something told me that he wasn’t going to have a whole lot of luck breaking through her thick chitin. His attacks did, though, keep her attention, and her attention being elsewhere gave me an idea.
I had a really good idea of cymothoan anatomy after spending a very long time taking them apart,
and the creatures didn’t have an overwhelming number of weak spots on the outside. However, they did have some. Notably, their antennae were connected right into their brain. All I had to do was climb the creature, cut the antennae out, and then scramble the brain like I was making breakfast for a one-night stand. Easy peasy.
The plan might have been simple, but there was certainly one major problem, climbing the Queen’s back. She was covered in the sticky mud, which, while happy to stick to me, wasn’t exactly a prime climbing surface. And the queen knew precisely when I touched her.
She spun around violently and whacked me in the midsection with one of her giant legs.
I went flying across the chamber, straight up skipping across the mud before slamming into the wall. My vision flashed in a technicolor nightmare, and pain exploded all across my torso, and I definitely felt as if there might be a bone or two loose.
Matthew’s roars continued, as well as his repeated bashing on the queen’s exoskeleton.
The queen was turning towards him, her foreleg raised up, ready to come down on him. I had to act fast. Whatever else Matthew was, a monster hunter he was not.
Getting to my feet, I shouted at the queen, and she seemed surprised to hear from me, stopping to look at me.
I cast shadow step. This time I sprinted across the room and did my best parkour leaping up her mud-covered body. One unknown advantage about the slowed time, my feet weren’t slipping in the mud they way they were in real-time, so as I shifted into the real world and full color, I was leaping the last bit to the queen’s head, my hand outstretched to grab onto the royal bug’s antennae. I crashed into her and did a full stripper turn around the pole of her sensory appendage.
Then I jammed my dagger into that little spot between chitin armor and sensitive nerves. It was a bigger circle cut than I’d done the whole previous night, but it was a move I knew, and the dagger zipped right around the base.
Meanwhile, the queen realized that something horrible was happening to her head and that a little annoying thing was there, so she reared up, angling to smash her head against the top of the chamber.
I knew that was going to be my downfall. Or up fall. I’d be little more than an elven paste on the roof. I didn’t particularly want to do that, so even though I’d cast it twice already, and a bunch of times that day, I cast my new favorite spell again.
Shadow step.
And I kept cutting the antennae off.
Or I tried to.
But nothing happened.
So I just moved far enough down the neck of the queen that I was out of the way of the roof. But as I shot back to reality, I thought I saw something at the edge of my vision. Something darker in and amongst the natural smoke of the Shadow Realm.
Back to normal speed, and I had to focus on the present, and on watching her crack her noggin on the roof completely sheering off the antennae I’d been working on, and revealing the inner workings of her tiny mind.
I used the dagger to help hold on, and get back onto the top of her head, and then I engaged in the foulest grape stomping that has ever been stomped.
Cool Beans, you learned the skill Brain Stomping. Now you can stomp on brains and make them into a fine goo. +5% damage, +10% goo
You don’t see that every day.
38
After I river danced through her grey matter, well, orange-ish white matter, she convulsed a bit before collapsing to the floor, sending me tumbling out into the muck.
But then I got that beautiful notification:
GG! You’ve killed a Lesser Cymothoa Queen (LVL 18 Greater Insect Matriarch)
You’ve earned 4000 XP.
And then some more notifications that made me smile:
Huzzah! Against all odds, you have reached Level 6! You receive 2 attribute points to distribute in the next 36 hours, or you lose them. Dare to believe you can survive, and achieve greatness. Or don’t.
Huzzah! Against all odds, you have reached Level 7! You receive 2 attribute points to distribute in the next 36 hours, or you lose them. Dare to believe you can survive, and achieve greatness. Or don’t.
I laid there on the ground, feeling like absolute shit, and yet smiling. Breathing hurt. Hell, being hurt. I stayed in the mud, just exhausted. Completely exhausted. Then there was a bright lantern over my face, illuminating Matthew’s concerned face.
“You still alive, boy?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“Fantastic work you did here.”
“Thanks?”
“Excellent use of spells, excellent use of weapons, critical hits on your opponent. Learning very well.”
I gave him a weak thumbs-up, then coughed up a little blood.
“Grit your teeth,” he said and promptly did a quick check of my ribs.
Which hurt.
And I screamed.
Then passed out when he put the ribs back in place.
But I was back in a minute or ten. At that point, he and Nadya were working on the queen’s corpse, beginning the harvesting process. I took a few moments to close my eyes and cycle mana around my body in my own version of the self-healing spell. If I may say so, it was a rather brilliant usage, I burned in my mana channels while doing damage to myself so I could also keep healing myself. I mean, at that particular point I didn’t need to add any extra damage to my person, but it was becoming a habit.
I’m not sure how long I remained in the mud healing myself, I just stayed there long enough to get back to mostly full. I felt much better, and a good portion of the queen had been removed from the chamber. I slowly stood up, let my body get used to being upright, and then I took one of the massive queen legs and dragged it through the tunnel, a tunnel that looked quite a bit larger now until I got into the pit. And walked into daylight. Clearly, I’d spent longer in the mud than I’d thought.
It took the better part of the day to get the queen’s bits out of the pit and sorted out up top. I noticed Nadya was working her butt off, and pointedly not looking in my direction. Nor, really, in Matthew’s. I wasn’t really the kind to hold a grudge or judge someone, which is actually a total lie. I was very into judging then. It’d been one of my primary activities back on Earth. And I was pretty pissed that Nadya froze up in the tunnel and just watched Matthew and I almost get eaten. Also, my nerves were firing off because I now had to worry about Nadya telling the powers that be that I dabbled in the arcane. I wasn’t sure if there’d be some imperial task force heading into the pit-yard ready to take me into whatever prison they put magic users. My life in Vuldranni could have been cut short at any moment.
But she didn’t say anything. Or do anything besides work. And I started to relent, thinking that It was pretty clear she felt just about as bad that she’d frozen up in the tunnel.
Once the queen had been parted out, Matthew sent Nadya off to find Wildingham and get some wagons over for deliveries. As soon as Nadya was out of the gate, Matthew waved me over to two stools sitting out front of the cottage. He patted one and passed a flask over to me as I sat down.
“That shadow step is useful stuff,” he said.
“Right?”
“Have you seen anything yet?”
“Maybe.”
“Best lay off it a spell. Let me do some talking to some people, see if I might find a better teacher for that part of your dark arts.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“I’m in your debt now, kid. You not only pulled my ass out of the fire, you also delivered me my biggest payday in a damn long time.”
“Queen bits are valuable, huh?”
“Damn right they are.”
He passed a leather bag over to me, about the size of a cantaloupe.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Stomach finds.”
I opened the bag and peered inside.
There was a surprising amount of jewelry inside. Rings, chains, bracelets, cuffs, brooches. Gold, platinum, silver, other metals.
“What…” I starte
d but trailed off. I didn’t know the question to ask.
“We have a decision to make.”
“Like who to sell this too?”
“That’s your bonus there,” he said, “you can decide who to sell it to.”
“Then what’s the problem here?”
Matthew took a slug from his flask, then held up a very large ring. It was huge, along the lines of a Super Bowl ring, except this one had more jewels, filigree, and an ornate carving across the top of it.
“Gonna have to explain it a bit to me,” I said.
“Signet ring.”
“Still nothing.”
“It’s the ring of a lord. In this case, a lord powerful and famous enough that I recognize his signet ring. And in case you still don’t get it, a signet ring is the symbol of the lord, the legal symbol. It is what a lord uses to sign documents, charters, pledges, to make oaths. It is one of the most important belongings a noble family has.”
“And now we have one.”
“Doesn’t exactly work that way. I’m not about to become Duke Fancypants because I’ve got this. What else might it mean?”
“Oh,” I said, realizing what he was really trying to get me to figure out.
“Yeah?”
“Someone dumped his body in this pit.”
Matthew snapped then pointed at me. He looked at the ring a bit more.
“So the question we face,” I said, “has to be whether we report the ring as being found or not, right?”
